Tata Motors experienced a 23% drop in electric vehicle sales in February, marking the ninth consecutive month of decline in the fiscal year 2025.

New Delhi: Tata Motors Ltd.’s electric vehicle (EV) sales have been on a downhill slide so far this fiscal, with sales of nine out of 11 months settling below their FY24 numbers, accompanied by a significant drop in market share. While the country’s top EV maker blames the withdrawal of a government incentive for the slide, analysts point to rising competition weaning away buyers.In February, the Mumbai-based company’s EV sales declined 23% from the year-ago period—from 6,923 units in February 2024 to 5,343 units last month. In FY25 so far (April 2024 to February 2025), Tata Motors’ EV sales have slid 12% year-on-year to 58,293 EVs in the domestic and international markets.This decline in sales has hurt the company’s EV market share, falling from 62% in 2024 to 46% in December, according to a 31 December note from Goldman Sachs. Meanwhile, JSW MG Motor, whose market share was 22% in 2024, recorded a 41% market share in December, largely driven by the introduction of the Windsor EV last September.Overall this fiscal, market share of the top three companies—Tata Motors, JSW MG Motor and Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M)—were 56%, 28% and 6.2%, respectively according to Vahan portal on 3 March.The country saw nearly 100,000 electric car sales in 2024, up from 82,688 in the previous year. The electric passenger vehicle market is dominated mainly by these two companies. Mahindra and Mahindra is the third largest player, with a 7% share in 2024, followed by Chinese EV maker BYD at 3%.Meanwhile, JSW MG Motor recorded 16.3% sales growth in February, selling 4,956 units. Of this, around 3,800 units were its EV models—Windsor, Comet, and ZS. MG Windsor crossed the production milestone of 15,000 units in February, five months after its launch.The changing landscape has hit Tata Motors’ share value on the stock exchanges as well. Between 1 April 2024 and 28 February, the company’s share price declined by more than 37% on the NSE.To be sure, Tata Motors launched its first electric car for personal buyers in October 2019. So far, it has sold over 200,000 electric vehicles in the country. Currently, it has the largest EV four-wheeler portfolio, which includes Curvv.ev, Nexon.ev, Punch.ev, Tigor.ev and Tiago.ev.Tata blames incentive pullbackThe company has attributed the weakening sales to the slowdown in growth of electric four-wheelers sold for commercial purposes owing to withdrawal of Fame-II subsidies in March 2024. Under the scheme, subsidies were given on the purchase of electric four wheelers used for commercial purposes like taxis.“[It’s] largely because of the decline that we have seen in the fleet segment once the FAME II incentives fell off in Q4 last fiscal,” Dhiman Gupta, chief financial officer at Tata Passenger Electric Mobility Ltd, said in a post-earnings call on 29 January.“Despite the very strong competition that we have seen in the last few quarters and the new launches from the competition, we have still been a